Having an evening on the sofa, usual dross on the TV but it’s the adverts that get my attention. In-between the ads, I scroll through Facebook and then flip over to Instagram, yeah yeah yeah, gwaaan judge me, like I frikkin give a shit. Anyway….. Anti-aging ads and aesthetically perfect Instagram …..

I’m 52, next birthday, yep my body is aging and it’s clearly noticeable, I’m embracing it, I feel great and I think I look great. I’ve never been conventional but it’s actually now, that I genuinely feel liberated from society’s normal, cos I believe, aging is the true beauty of living one’s life.

How dare society deem aging as anything less than beautiful, and in doing so, then FUCK BEING BEAUTIFUL! Nature cannot be controlled and the desperation of trying to stop and or reverse aging is the sin, and its a crime, a crime against wisdom.

The headaches are too much, they cripple me and take me down to a dark place, that I have then got to swim against the emotional current, fighting to get back up, takes days out of my daily life, enough is enough. It’s obvious that my body doesn’t accept this treatment and I have to find another way to make sure that the breast cancer doesn’t come back. Read the rest of this entry »

The photo above isn’t Glastonbury Tor, this is the wishing tree at Avebury Stones, where we stopped on our journey home. I didn’t take any pictures of us at the Tor, I didn’t want to but I’d like to write about it on my blog.

Speciesism is the root cause of every form of discrimination, human delusion of superiority. Until such times that humanity eradicates speciesism, discrimination such as racism, will continue to exist. Dealing with racism alone is like treating a symptom and not the cause.

Part of my morning rituals before practice, is to study for half an hour the Yoga Sutras. This morning, this was staring at me, wanting to be read, as I was looking up something else. It was one of those moments, when you’ve grasped an understanding, you sit back for that moment, and your mind says, “yeah”.

Sorry I’ve been a stranger but thanks blog for hanging in there. I didn’t stay in touch because 2015 was too negative, so yeah ok, talking about unhappy stuff can help but I really needed to go away and deal with it on my own. Anyway, that was then and this is now and life couldn’t be any better.

You’ll be glad to hear that I stayed dedicated to my practice, it got me through the lowest of the lows. I did my pilgrimage to India and went to Australia, which I will share with you as we go through 2016 where I’m doing another pilgrimage to India and off to Botswana, amazing.

The dogs are doing great, Asbo no change, Rosie-Moo has had to slow things down because she has bone disease in both her elbows and Trixie-Bells is just crackers. Planning on getting back to our trekking adventures so stay posted for that.

Cycling is fantastic, I love it, seriously thinking about getting a GPS to log my distance and time. Mmmmmmmm see how the funds go.

Slacklining, didn’t go on it last year, put it on the back burner so I could stay focused on the yoga. Glad I did, I’m ready to start again come spring.

Cooking, obviously good and will try to post you stuff about that too but don’t wait up for that cos I probably too busy with all the other stuff.

Feels good to be back and I’m looking forward to keeping you up to date with stuff.

I’m not going to go into the causes of my depression, that’ll only make you depressed. Instead I’d like to turn this condition on its head, look at it from a positive angle and share how I cope when a bout of depression hits.

Each episode has prepared me for the next and each time I have experienced depression its never as bad as the last. I’ve learnt how to recognise my symptoms and I know that my depression is always triggered by present situations, that pertain to situations from around about the age of 4 years old, to my early 30’s. My past self preservation was to suppress emotions, which is something I managed from childhood. As children it’s very difficult to fight back in defence and when I was big enough and knowledgeable enough to maybe retaliate, I didn’t, I was too scared, this I carried with me right up until I was in my early 30’s. My only strength, was that every time I was knocked down I could pick myself up, brush myself down and carry on, which I still do today and I do this very well.

My depression isn’t a daily thing, I’m not fighting it all of the time, the majority of my daily life is genuinely very happy. On the odd occasion that depression hits, I have a silent self harming condition, its not visible to the eye as in those who sadly cut themselves, no, I retreat into isolation and paranoia of hating who I am and wanting to hurt the person who is inside of me. But, again I must stress that this isn’t something which happens on a regular basis, my depression can be symptom free for years, it takes a particular something to trigger it. I sincerely like who I am, I am proud of who I have become, I can honestly say that I accept what has been, who I was and what I did and that all of those things have never actually made me a bad person. I realise that up until a certain time in my life I was a victim and can also now comfortably state, when I made myself a victim and that I used other people to take that bitterness out on, I realise the vicious circle and I truly feel that my depression is now dealing with the latter of the cause and I am making peace with myself. Oh and one more thing before I move on, there is no excuse for taking bitterness out on loved ones, that isn’t what I am trying to achieve here. This is about me taking a good look at myself, being honest with myself, saying it out loud and dealing with my own wrongs.

So how do I cope? Well to begin with I admit to myself that not all is well, this can take a couple of days and the reason I say that is because being down is not being depressed. I can get down in the dumps and feel generally fed up with stuff but my zest for life doesn’t leave me and my lifestyle gets me back on top without me having to change anything. With depression this doesn’t happen, that zest isn’t there and no matter what efforts I try to continue with my simple healthy lifestyle, a demon inside of me fights it, the demon is able to overpower me and takes me to a place that is …. hell. The demon then starts showing me my past, the past that has been triggered by something that has taken place in my present, the demon reminds me of how bad I felt about myself, why the people I loved so much didn’t like me and then the vicious circle begins. It’s this awareness that helps me to my next coping mechanism.

My next coping mechanism is something that I picked up very recently thanks to my yoga teacher. In his teachings to me, he has made me more intricately aware of my mind and through yoga the relevance of self study and how yoga and its objective is the understanding of freedom from the past, impacting on our present. Through his teaching of the philosophy and of yoga as a whole way of life, I am able to look inward and fight this demon for the first time in my life. I am becoming more secure with the realities of my life and not to hold these personal grudges against myself.

The best coping mechanisms of all, admitting that I need help and telling people, talking. Do you know what, if a complete stranger was to offer me an ear, I could so easily spill my guts, I don’t hold back, I have absolutely no restraints on letting people know my crap. This is my attention seeking mechanism, this is what I crave, love and acceptance. As a child, rejection for me was a huge disappointment, it became destructive and in the early years caused me to retreat, as I became a young adult it turned and I became an exhibitionist, this got me into a lot of trouble, and so then I would retreat and that vicious circle begins. But, the whole point was to attract people to love me, only they would love me for the wrong reasons and what ever relationships I struck up, were wrong for me and they wouldn’t last very long. Back to talking, I’m now older, wiser and I choose my friends and I talk, I tell them, I tell them because for the short period that I am dealing with depression, I need help, I need love and I need acceptance.

Taking time out is a very important coping mechanism. My body reacts to negativity in that depression exhausts my body and of cause, this has a huge knock on effect by decreasing immunities. I stop all that I am doing for a few days, I have too, I will have retreated and I’m internally self harming, I need to admit that as quickly as possible, I can’t get to grips with the next step up out of hell till I admit that. In the past bouts of depression, time out has taken years, my first and diagnosed episode of depression took 2 years but now, its taking me days. So time out, and I don’t make any commitments that put pressure on me.

Getting my teeth into a project, simple, distract the mind from the demon and do something that is productive and create senses of achievement. I got this mechanism from my second bout of depression which lasted just under a year. I put myself through college, had 3 kids in tow but got out there and asked for the help I needed, hay don’t be shy about asking for help, asking for help is the first step towards self-help. Completed a full year and became a Sports Therapist, never looked back, been creating my own employment ever since. My third bout of depression which lasted about 5 months, I took up pole dancing, like wow!

Goodness over evil does prevail, blimey that sounds very dramatic doesn’t it, but it’s true, well it’s true in my case. That good old, pick yourself up, brush yourself down and sort your life out Anna-Marie, survival mechanism, when it kicks in ‘she’ doesn’t take any prisoners. I like that about me a lot and I am grateful for that trait. As the depression reaches it’s end and I feel some inner strength of which I truly don’t know where it comes from, I actually pick myself up and get on with it and I feel a huge amount of elation when it happens, which does settle and life goes back to my normality.

I’m just coming out of a bout of depression, it lasted a week!! I needed to share, its helped a lot, I did retreat a little, there is a little internal self harming but I don’t feel like I’m in hell, the lights didn’t completely go out, if you know what I mean.

To my daughters, you are my life line, to my husband you are my rock, to my friends, you are my therapy and I love you all so very very much.